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Sir Henry Thompson’s Fish Soup

A fish soup made with haddock, whiting bones, carrots, onions, and herbs, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sir Henry Thompson’s Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, onion, shallot, cloves, thyme, and parsley, then fry gently until they turn reddish.

  3. Pour in the cold water and bring to a boil, skimming occasionally.

  4. Add the haddock pieces and the head and bones of the whitings, and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  6. Remove the bones and strain the soup through a coarse strainer.

Finish and serve

  1. Divide the whiting fillets into small portions and boil them in some of the stock for a few minutes.

  2. Garnish with chopped parsley and chervil.

  3. Serve in a tureen.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Builds a rich fat base in which the vegetables soften and take on colour.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stock as they cook down.
Haddock
Releases flavour and gelatin into the stock during the long simmer, giving depth.
Whiting fillets
Provide tender pieces of delicate fish that cook quickly in the hot stock.

The step that matters

Skimming the stock as it comes to a boil. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and impurities that would otherwise cloud the soup and taste bitter or scummy, leaving a clearer, cleaner broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, shallot, clove, thyme, parsley, haddock):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, shallot, clove, thyme, parsley, haddock. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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